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Thursday, August 15, 2013

{Indie Spotlight} The Obvious Game by Rita Arens

The Odd Truth About Growing Up, by Rita Arens

I was above the age of thirty-five when I started working on my debut young adult novel, THE OBVIOUS GAME, and I'd just turned thirty-nine when it was published. A
lot of people have asked me how I can write in a teen voice since I'm so, well, not teenaged. So here's the thing: My inner self still is.

When I was a kid, I thought I'd never be forty, and here I am knocking on its door. I have a nine-year-old daughter. I was in fourth grade in 1984. I remember the
launch of MTV. I didn't use email in college, and I didn't get a cell phone until I was twenty-four. I have never read Harry Potter. I am so old. And I was a precocious teen, so I got very comfortable being the youngest person in the room at all manner of occasions. It's a shock to not be the kid anymore. It hurts a little sometimes, but it's happened despite my best intentions. I can't imagine being
taken seriously by the average thirteen-year-old on most subjects, and even my flip-flops have arches in them. But here's something I didn't realize when I was sitting
around as a teen watching my parents and grandparents suck down lemonade and eat pie on the back deck on summer evenings: They probably felt about seventeen, too.
It's not that I haven't benefitted from the twenty-two years of life experience between then and now. I'm a better driver. I understand I am in fact capable of
surviving on three hours of sleep a night for months on end (thanks, daughter) without actually dying. I'm not afraid of things like mortgages and marriage and career
paths. But I remember the wonder and the fear and the awesome that was doing things -- adult things -- for the first time. I remember my first paycheck, my first day
driving a car alone (I wrecked), waking up on the morning after high school graduation. The teen years are sublime in that they're awesome and horrible at all once, and doing new
things -- like writing a novel and trying to get it published -- feels like that, too. Meeting a new group of people can feel like high school all over again: exhilerating,
intimidating, thought-provoking or boring, depending. Your parents are always your parents, and if you're anything like me, their disapproval stings just as hard at
thirty-nine as it did at nineteen. Sure, you can avoid them a lot easier, but your parents are always and forever your parents.

THE OBVIOUS GAME takes a lot of plot points from my own life. Diana, the protagonist, has a mom with cancer and an eating disorder, and I did, too, only not at the
same time like poor Diana. The events in the book are different from the events in my life, but I remember, oh, I remember what all of that felt like, and I
tried to let that echo throughout the book. My goal in writing THE OBVIOUS GAME was to help people understand what that feels like, all of it, because I couldn't have explained it at seventeen because I was too deep in the living it. One benefit of getting older is the pain of certain things softens and gives me the ability to examine what happened without freaking out, turn them over and look for meaning in a way I just wasn't ready to do when I was in high school. Some things never change, though -- I got so into re-living a mother/daughter relationship from the daughter's point of view that at
one point during revisions I woke up every day for a week really mad at my mother, who is now sixty-nine and has not told me which shoes to wear since 1992. I'm instead, insisting my daughter put on socks. How did that happen?

I told a bunch of my friends in their thirties, forties and fifties about my perspective, and almost everyone said the same thing: You think it'll feel different to
be older, but it really doesn't. Your body gets older. You get tired earlier. Your vision changes. But inside? You're still the same person you were when you were a
teenager, maybe more certain of which parts of yourself you like the best or want to work on, but the same person. I think those of us who write YA are more
comfortable feeling the old feelings, but I'm convinced everyone has them. What do you think?

“Everyone trusted me back
then. Good old, dependable Diana. Which is why most people didn’t notice at
first.”
"Your shirt is
yellow."
"Your eyes are
blue."
"You have to stop
running away from your problems."
"You're too
skinny."
Fifteen-year-old Diana
Keller accidentally begins teaching The Obvious Game to new kid Jesse on his
sixteenth birthday. As she buries her shock about her mother's fresh cancer
diagnosis in cookbooks, peach schnapps and Buns of Steel workouts, Diana both seduces
athlete Jesse and shoves him away under the guise of her carefully constructed
sentences. As their relationship deepens, Diana avoids Jesse's past with her
own secrets -- which she'll protect at any cost. Will Diana and Jesse's love
survive his wrestling obsession and the Keller family's chaos, or will all
their important details stay buried beneath a game?

Praise for The Obvious Game:

"Lovely, evocative, painful and joyful all in one ... much like high school." -- Jenny Lawson, author of LET'S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED

“I couldn’t put down THE
OBVIOUS GAME. Arens perfectly captures the hunger, pain and uncertainty of
adolescence.” -- Ann Napolitano, author of A GOOD HARD LOOK and WITHIN ARM'S REACH

"THE OBVIOUS GAME is a
fearless, honest, and intense look into the psychology of anorexia. The
characters—especially Diana--are so natural and emotionally authentic that
you’ll find yourself yelling at the page even as you’re compelled to turn
it." -- Coert Voorhees, author of LUCKY FOOLS and THE BROTHERS TORRES

"Let’s be clear about
one thing: there’s nothing obvious about THE OBVIOUS GAME. Arens has written a
moving, sometimes heart-breaking story about one girl’s attempt to control the
uncontrollable. You can’t help but relate to Diana and her struggles as you
delve into this gem of a novel." -- Risa Green, author of THE SECRET SOCIETY OF
THE PINK CRYSTAL BALL

"THE OBVIOUS GAME explores the chasms between conformity
and independence, faith and fear, discoveries and secrets, first times and last
chances, hunger and satisfaction. The tortured teenage experience is captured
triumphantly within the pages of this unflinching, yet utterly relatable,
novel. - Erica Rivera, author of INSATIABLE: A YOUNG MOTHER’S STRUGGLE WITH
ANOREXIA

When we were in seventh grade,
Amanda and I snuck out of her house one foggy Saturday night to meet her
boyfriend, Matt. We spent more time planning our escape than we did actually conducting
it.
We’d made a list while pretending
to do our homework:
Wrap flashlights with black
electrical tape. (check)
Make fake bodies out of pillows
to hide in our sleeping bags. (check)
Booby-trap her bedroom door with
string across the threshold so we could see if her mom had tried to check on
us. (check)
Assemble all-black outfits,
complete with stocking caps, so we would blend in with the shadows as we
walked. (check)
Arrange the rendezvous point
ahead of time with Matt: the third-grade playground at the elementary school.
(check)
It wasn’t until we’d successfully
shimmied down the fence, jogged the four blocks up the street, and seen Matt
sitting there alone on the seesaw that I realized I had nothing at all to do
while they giggled and kissed. I’d been so caught up in the planning portion of
our escape that I didn’t notice how pathetic my part in it seemed.
I twirled on the swings across
the playground and out of view, once again pretending to be totally cool with
it. The thing was, though, I wasn’t cool with it. I felt about as important as
the guy who wrote the cooking instructions for Pop-Tarts.
We probably would’ve stayed there
for hours if I hadn’t finally strode over to the jungle gym, coughing and
kicking rocks as I went. Amanda poked her head out.
“What’s up, Diana?”
“Can we go soon? I forgot to
bring a book.”
Her expectant smile turned sour. “Okay,”
she finally said, disappearing in the darkness. “Just five more minutes.”
I wandered to the edge of the
playground, thought about turning back on my own, letting her get caught out
there by herself. But I wouldn’t. That’s what friends are for. She knew it. I
knew it.
Everyone trusted me. Good old
dependable Diana. Which was why most people didn’t notice at first that I was
in trouble.The Obvious Game Playlist
Chapter 1: Pride by White Lion (1987) – When the Children
Cry
Chapter 2: Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses (1987)
– Welcome to the Jungle
Chapter 3: Scarecrow by John Mellencamp (1985) – Small Town
Chapter 4: True Colors by Cyndi Lauper (1986) – True Colors
Chapter 5: Can’t Hold Back by Eddie Money (1986) – Take Me
Home Tonight
Chapter 6: Hysteria by Def Leppard (1987) – Hysteria
Chapter 7: Nothing’s Shocking by Jane’s Addiction (1988) –
Jane Says
Chapter 8: Just Like the First Time by Freddie Jackson
(1986) – Have You Ever Loved Somebody
Chapter 9: Use Your Illusion by Guns N’Roses (1991) – November
Rain
Chapter 10: Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf (1977) – Bat Out of
Hell
Chapter 11: Head Games by Foreigner (1979) – Dirty White Boy
Chapter 12: Faith by George Michael (1987) – Monkey
Chapter 13: Cuts Like a Knife by Bryan Adams (1983) –
Straight From the Heart
Chapter 14: Double Vision by Foreigner (1978) – Hot Blooded
Chapter 15: Disintegration by The Cure (1989) – Fascination
Street
Chapter 16: Poison by Bell Biv
DeVoe (1990) – Poison
Chapter 17: Achtung Baby by U2
(1991) -- Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?
Chapter 18: Nevermind by Nirvana
(1991) – Smells Like Teen Spirit
Chapter 19: Listen Without
Prejudice by George Michael (1990) – Something to Save
Chapter 20: Out of Time by R.E.M.
(1991) – Losing My Religion
Chapter 21: The Way It Is by Bruce
Hornsby (1986) – Mandolin Rain
Chapter 22: Infected by The The
(1986) – Out of the Blue (Into the Fire)
Chapter 23: Strange Fire by Indigo
Girls (1989) – Strange Fire
Chapter 24: Little Earthquakes by
Tori Amos (1992) -- China